This chapter is from the book

In this chapter

Different types of editors for creating Web pages

Tools for graphics, animation, and scripting

How Web server space works

Obtaining Web server space and uploading files to that space

Web publishing doesn't require expensive or complicated tools. In fact,
you'll find that you can get away with using just a simple text editor,
like those that come with Windows, Unix, or the MacOs. In addition, you can find
useful downloadable shareware applications to help you with HTML, graphic
images, and multimedia. Beyond the basic tools, you also need to look into
Internet services if you plan to make your Web pages available on the
Internet.

The Basic Tools

As discussed in Chapter 1, "The Fundamentals of Web Publishing,"
HTML documents are nothing more than plain-text documents with markup commands
that instruct a Web browser to arrange and format text in certain ways. Other
commands are used to add images, hypertext, and multimedia to the page, but
those commands are still plain-text commands that are interpreted by the Web
browser.

The plain-text nature of HTML documents means that all you really need to
hand-code HTML is a text editor application. It can be something as simple and
friendly as Windows Notepad (see Figure 3.1) or the Mac's SimpleText
editor. You have similar choices in other operating systemsvi or emacs in
any Unix and Unix-like OS, and TextEdit in MacOs X.

Figure 3.1 HTML pages can be edited in simple text editors such as Windows
Notepad.

The main issue to remember is that your documents need to be saved as
plain-text or ASCII documents, so your text editing application must be capable
of saving such documents (as opposed to, say, Microsoft Word format or Rich Text
Format). You can use a word processing application to create your HTML
documents, as long as you save the documents as plain-text.

NOTE

ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information
Interchange, a standard method for representing English letters and numbers
in computing. The most universal format for text documents on computing
platforms, it's the basis of many files being read by different sorts of
computers, such as HTML documents.

If you do opt to use a word processor (which I don't really recommend),
note that many of them have the specific option of saving files as HTML
documents. Generally, you don't want to do that because the word
processor translates the page, as typed, into HTML, adding markup to maintain
the appearance of the document in your word processor. In other words, it
ignores the HTML markup that you've entered yourself and adds markup so
that the page appears with the tags intact when displayed in a browser (see
Figure 3.2).

Figure 3.2 If you use a word processor for your pages, save them as text,
not as HTML. Otherwise, your element tags appear when the page is viewed in a
Web browser.

Instead, you should save the document as plain-text, text, or ASCII text, but
with the filename extension .htm or .html (more on that
later).

Ideally, though, you'd use either a text editorwhich can be very
basic or rather specializedor an HTML editor that enables you to edit the
HTML source code (the text and markup) directly. Let's look at each
possibility.

Text Editors

As noted, you can opt to use the simple text editors included with your
operating system. In Microsoft Windows, it's Notepad; in the MacOs
it's SimpleText or TextEdit. Unix and Linux systems offer a number of text
editors, from basic to sophisticated.

NOTE

Where do you find these programs? Throughout the next few sections,
you'll see the Web sites associated with the individual editors that are
recommended. But if you'd like to do a little surfing on your own, try
http://www.download.com/,
which offers links to the vast majority of shareware, freeware, and
demonstration applications available for all the different computing
platforms.

If you'd like to move up to the next level, however, you'll find
that a good programmer's text editor may be helpful in creating and
organizing your HTML code. Popular editors for Microsoft Windows include TextPad
(http://www.textpad.com),
UltraEdit
(http://www.ultraedit.com,
shown in Figure 3.3) and EditPlus
(http://www.editplus.com),
among many others. The Macintosh has fewer text editors, although BBEdit and
BBEdit Lite
(http://www.barebones.com)
are very highly regarded, for both MacOs 9 and MacOs X. (MacOs X also includes
Unix-style text editors via its Terminal application.)

Figure 3.3 In UltraEdit you can manage multiple text files, see HTML codes
in special colors, and access a quick reference panel of HTML elements.

Most text editors you come across are designed to work well for HTML
authoring, as well as other types of markup and programming. You'll find
that some of them automatically recognize markup as such, turning them into
different colors for easy viewing. Others may offer a toolbar button for
displaying an HTML document in a Web browser (to test how it looks and whether
hyperlinks are working correctly), a spell-checking feature, or other
interesting options. Experiment a bit to find a text editor that really works
well for you.

HTML Editors

The other type of editor you might consider downloading or purchasing is one
that's specifically designed for HTML documents. These editors come in two
basic flavorssource code editors and WYSIWYG editors.
WYSIWYG, which stands for "What You See Is What You Get," means
you're editing the Web page as it will look in a Web browser. In this case,
you're not marking up text and adding HTML commands and elements, but
rather typing text, importing images, and moving items around on the page, much
as you'd do in a word processing or desktop publishing program.

Because Absolute Beginner's Guide to Creating Web Pages focuses
on editing XHTML source code (the raw text and markup elements), WYSIWYG editors
are not discussed in the book itself, but you can go onlineto find
"Graphical Editors," a chapter that will introduce you to some of the
more popular graphical editors, such as Dreamweaver and FrontPage. (See the
Introduction of this book for details.) You'll find that a WYSIWYG editor
is a great tool to have on hand for prototyping and editing Web sites. That
said, it's important to learn the raw XHTML first, particularly if you
aspire to do Web publishing professionally, because no WYSIWYG editor is
perfect. They can't always adhere to the latest standards, they aren't
all capable of more complex tasks (such as scripting or interactive elements),
and sometimes you need to "dig into the code" to get them to work
exactly as you'd like them to. If you want to go beyond a text editor, you
might look into one that's specifically designed to help you edit HTML
source code. For Microsoft Windows, some recommended editors include HotDog
Professional and HotDog PageWiz
(http://www.sausagetools.com),
HandyHTML
(http://www.silveragesoftware.com),
and CoffeeCup HTML Editor
(http://www.coffeecup.com).
For Macintosh, popular options include PageSpinner
(http://www.optima-system.com)
and WebDesign
(http://www.ragesw.com). The
latter is shown in Figure 3.4.

If you need to watch out for anything with HTML editors, it's that
they're up-to-date and support the level of HTML (or XHTML) that you want
to use for your authoring. For the purposes of this book, you should use an
editor that supports HTML 4.01 Transitional or XHTML 1.0 Transitional, if
it's an option. (If you're trying to create strict documents, you can
use XHTML 1.0 Strict if the editor supports it). Older HTML editors may support
an older standard, or may recommend elements or markup that don't conform
to the newer standard. You can probably still use them; just be aware of the
differences.

NOTE

Some editors can support different compatibility modes, so you may find an
option in the preferences to format pages as strict, transitional, XHTML 1.0, or
HTML 4.01. In other cases, the editor may only support one specification, so
it's good to know which one.